Human Complexities Make Smooth Symbolism Difficult

The life of a symbol is a deceptively simple life. In exchange for a place in history, you need only surrender that slice of yourself which serves the purpose of "the cause."

Through just such selective editing, the poster girl of the national abortion rights movement is being repackaged now as a crusader in the antiabortion army.

With an Operation Rescue baptism in a suburban Dallas swimming pool, we are told, the woman whose efforts to end her unwanted pregnancy led to the legalization of abortion exchanged her pro-choice button for a pro-life placard.

Lost, of course, in the symbolism of her sudden conversion is the flesh and blood Norma McCorvey, the pseudonymous plaintiff more widely known as "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision.

The antiabortion crowd should be forewarned: the role of symbol has never been a very comfortable fit for McCorvey.

Not in 1969 when two young Texas lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, recruited the pregnant 20-year-old alcoholic and drug abuser to be their anonymous plaintiff in a class action suit challenging a 100-year-old state abortion statute.

Not in 1980 when "Jane Roe" impulsively revealed her identity to a Dallas newscaster because they were both born under the same astrological sign.

Not in 1987 when she admitted lying about the circumstances of her historic pregnancy, a pregnancy that ended not in abortion but in adoption in 1970, while Roe v. Wade made its way to the nation's highest court. She had not been raped, as she claimed, but had simply failed to use birth control with a lover.

And certainly not in 1989, when a Missouri abortion case that could have overturned Roe v. Wade arrived at the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court. The seeds of McCorvey's defection might well have been sown on a chilly April afternoon that year when "Jane Roe" had to push her way onto a Washington platform at the largest abortion rights demonstration in American history.

Where exactly does a chronically depressed former carnival barker-cleaning-woman-bartender-file-clerk stand at a nationally televised NOW rally? Between Jane Fonda and Judy Collins? Behind Whoopi Goldberg?

There was no touch of irony in her voice when Kate Michelman, the longtime national abortion rights lobbyist, expressed concern that McCorvey is "being used" by the antiabortion side.

Of course she is being used. Just as she has been used for the last 15 years by Michelman and her allies.

It is a national disease, this mania to turn complicated human beings into one-dimensional symbols.

Antiabortion activists might get some immediate use from their shiny new tool, but soon the complexities and the ambiguities of Norma McCorvey's real life will surface, as they surface more privately for us all.

In embracing its new symbol, will Operation Rescue edit out Norma McCorvey's refusal to disavow a woman's right to first-trimester abortions?

Perhaps McCorvey said it best herself six years ago, while she waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether it would overturn Roe v. Wade. "More and more, I'm the issue," the reluctant icon told a reporter. "I don't know if I should be the issue. Abortion is the issue and I've never had an abortion."